Software Tips & Tutorials

MP4 Compressor: How to Reduce MP4 File Size without Losing Much Quality on Windows (10)

MP4 compressor is badly needed to make large (GoPro) MP4 smaller, for uploading to YouTube, Instagram, sending to others via email, or space saving, etc.

MP4 is surely the NO.1 mainstream container format used both online and offline. If you have piles of commercial or homemade MP4 movie/music videos on your hard drive or memory card, and would like to reduce MP4 file size to free up some storage space, to upload relatively smaller MP4 videos to web, because many video sharing sites or social media channels limit the video size of MP4 footage you upload, to send to others via email, or just for playing on portable devices smoothly, this tutorial relevant for How to Reduce MP4 File Size with free MP4 compressor must fit the bill.

Your First Choice for Reducing MP4 File Size on Windows 10

WinX Free Video Converter, the best free (MP4) video compressor, is able to reduce the file size of any MP4 video, be it H.264/AVC MP4, GoPro HEVC/H.265 MP4 or so. Free download it to compress big-sized 8K/4K/1080p MP4 fast and free now!

Way 2 - Reduce MP4 File Size by Trimming/Cropping Video
This is a conservative way to compress MP4 video by cutting unnecessary part off, remaining less video content with the original quality, or cropping annoying black bars for playback video in full screen.

Top Free MP4 Compessors for Reducing MP4 File Size on Windows 10

WinX Free Video Converter

WinX Free Video Converter is 100% free and clean software to fulfill common video conversion needs, especially for those newbies who are not so skilled with software or computer. It has two versions for both Windows and Mac OS X, helping you compress MP4 in a more stable way than HandBrake, and more convenient than Windows Movie Maker. Let's take a look at the three ways it offers to shrink/reduce MP4 file size:

* Choose "MP4 Video (AAC/MP3)" at PC General Video or FLV/WMV etc., place the scroll bar to "LQ/Fast".
* Open "Setting" window to adjust the listed video audio parameters like resolution, aspect ratio, bit rate, frame rate.
* "Edit" function features well in video cropping, trimming, deleting the unwanted video content and black bars from the sides for reducing MP4 file size with no quality sacrifice at all. After that, click "RUN" button to start the MP4 down-sizing.

"I will have MP4 videos ranging in size from 3 GB to 4.5 GB and will need to compress them down to 500 MB in order to be able to load them on Vimeo. I downloaded your program last night and converted a MP4 video that was 441.6 MB in size and it was 161.5 MB after converting it. That works out to 36.57%." - feedback from WinX user

Note: The data in feedback is not generalizable to all MP4 reducing cases. Because the results vary from source MP4 videos, compressing ways, the computer properties etc.

HandBrake

Handbrake is a totally free open-sourced video transcoder, that you can turn help for compressing MP4 on Windows (and Mac/Linux). After opening the source MP4 file, you just need to choose "High Profile" in the right drawer, and then resize the resolution or crop video under "Picture" option, set the video framerate/quality and optimize video to define the video size. Definitely the lower quality/faster converting speed you set, the smaller MP4 video size you'll get.

Note: If you want to compress MP4 to FLV or other formats or you need full pre-settings about video quality, resolution and bit rate, which will save you much time, Handbrake is not a good choice for you.

Windows Movie Maker

Supported OS: Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows 10 (Included with Windows ME/XP/Vista)Download Link: It is no longer available for download on Microsoft official site since January 10, 2017.

Windows Movie Maker is a free video editing tool (included in Windows Essentials) of Microsoft for Windows 7, 8 and Windows Server 2008 R2. However when you upgrade those OSs to the latest Windows 10, it will be removed, which means you have to download Movie Maker and reinstall it on Win10 again if you wanna use it. (For Mac users, iMovie is a similar way to go.)

Also, kindly note that in Movie Maker, you have the option to save your file as a project file - a format that owns quite smaller file size, because all it contains are the file names, the list of edit points etc., no actual video, photos or music at all.

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